İletişim

Numericable STB embedded in Loewe TVs
Pascale Paoli-Lebailly | 03-10-2012
The Mini-STB by Numericable will be embedded in German manufactured TV sets from Loewe as of the beginning of November.
This exclusive six-month partnership will allow Numericables subs to access, from all Loewes new TV sets, the same TV bouquet as with an at-home STB, including HD and 3DTVchannels, radio stations, and EPG.

Latest Satellite TV News

Numericable STB embedded in Loewe TVs

Pascale Paoli-Lebailly | 03-10-2012

The Mini-STB by Numericable will be embedded in German manufactured TV sets from Loewe as of the beginning of November.

This exclusive six-month partnership will allow Numericables subs to access, from all Loewes new TV sets, the same TV bouquet as with an at-home STB, including HD and 3DTVchannels, radio stations, and EPG.

French broadcaster TF1 has entered into a partnership with Trendrr to bring social TV to the new season of BBC Worldwide Productions Frances Danse avec les stars.

During the run, social data, both qualitative and quantitative, will be exploited in real time and included in the live programme as well as on MyTF1.

Every Saturday evening, viewers will be invited to comment the way celebrities are dancing and share impressions on social networks. The best messages will be screened live on screen while MyTF1 platform will offer exclusive and enriched contents.

After the show, the new La suite format Danse Avec Les Stars will offer a follow-up on social TV activity during the prime-time show.

TF1 has already integrated since the last two years social talks about its programming. After the tweet replay, Trendrrs solution goes further and help us strengthening the relation and engagement of our audience around TF1 brand and multi-screens programming, said

For viewers a guilty pleasure and for the broadcaster a ratings smash, however Channel 4s second series of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings has been slammed for endorsing negative prejudicial views and even being harmful to children and depicting a child in a sexualised way.

An adjudication by the UKs Advertising Standards Authority Council (ASA) has condemned thoroughly the advertising campaign that promoted the Bigger, Fatter, Gypsier series franchise, broadcast in February 2012, revealing the cultural aspects of the Irish traveller comity in the UK which regularly faces in-built prejudice.

David Enright, a partner with Howe & Co Solicitors, a UK law firm which acted for the Irish Travellers Movement in Britain (ITMB) and members of the Irish Traveller community in bringing formal complaints to the ASA about Channel 4s advertising campaign, commented: Sadly, racial discrimination against Travellers and Gypsies is seen as the last socially acceptable form of racism in modern Britain. Appallingly, Channel 4s advertising campaign promoted and endorsed negative prejudicial views. This is a stunning, landmark victory for Travellers and Gypsies, who are all too often portrayed negatively in the press and media. The billboard campaign was harmful to children and fell very short of the conduct required of any serious public broadcaster, especially when it depicted a Traveller child in a sexualised way. Senior executives within Channel 4 must consider their positions. The sponsors of the television programme, whose name appeared below these advertisements, should also consider whether it is happy to be associated with such irresponsible and harmful advertising, especially where children may have been harmed.

Fellow partner Martin Howe called on those involved in positively promoting such prejudicial views to consider their suitability to be part of a mainstream public broadcaster.

The executive committee of UEFA, European football’s governing body, has awarded the commercial rights management of its national team competitions to CAA Eleven who will be dedicated exclusively to managing the broadcasting, sponsorship and licensing rights.

What it means in practice is that CAA Eleven will manage the centralised commercial rights to the UEFA EURO 2016 qualifying and final tournaments competition as well as the European qualifying competition for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the 24-team UEFA EURO 2016.

“Our strategic aim was to exploit the commercial rights for our national team competitions under one roof,” said UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino. “This would then allow us to offer a coherent approach in optimising overall revenue streams for our member associations going forward. A similar centralisation of commercial rights has helped to strengthen European club football over the past two decades, and we expect that the same will now happen for national team football on this continent.”

“We are honoured to have been selected by UEFA to represent the prestigious rights for UEFA’s national team competitions,” said David O’Connor, Managing Partner, CAA, which represents many of the most successful professionals working in film, television, music, video games, theatre, fashion and the Internet. “We look forward to working closely with our partners at UEFA, one of the world’s most respected governing bodies, and its 53 member associations, to create precedent-setting opportunities around the globe for these highly-coveted media assets.”

German production company I&U TV Production has been commissioned by BBC One for Zodiak Rights to make The Brightest Briton for production company RDF Television.

Slotted for an early 2013 broadcast, the format sees a jury visit towns and cities across the UK to select performers who will act in front of a live studio audience, battling for the title and a large cash prize.

I&U Information und Unterhaltung TV Produktion GmbH & Co.KG produces primetime entertainment, weekly magazine shows, reports and docu-soaps. More than 120 brand new shows by I&U are broadcast each year on the major German TV stations. The company has around 136 employees.

This format acquisition deal from I&U TV Production followed Zodiak Rights’ acquisition of I&U’s format You’ve Got to be Kidding Me in 2011, which launched in Germany and resulted in two subsequent re commissions. Zodiak Rights owns worldwide rights (excluding Germany) to Nation’s Brightest.

Commenting on the deal, Paul Martin, Vice President of Entertainment, Zodiak Rights said:

“At a time when many broadcasters are looking beyond formulaic talent shows we feel Nation’s Brightest is a fantastic format that appeals across all age groups and to all walks of life. It is, at its heart, a show that anyone can participate in and anyone can enjoy as a viewer. We are sure that the BBC version will enjoy the same success as the original German show and we look forward to further international

ThinkAnalytics Recommendations Engine has been deployed by more than 25 service providers, including Liberty Global, BSkyB, Virgin Media, ITV, and Telenet, and currently delivers Intelligent Navigation to more than 70 million licensed subscribers.

Under the terms of the new deal, the ThinkAnalytics Recommendations Engine will enable Mediaroom customers to deliver recommendations and intelligent viewing across IP-based video services to subscribers worldwide. Furthermore, ThinkAnalytics says that by enabling features that enrich the TV experience, such as viewer profiles or contextual applications, both on the main screen and devices, subscribers can experience more personalised TV through a unified user interface.

With todays announcement, were bringing the power and versatility of ThinkAnalytics to Mediaroom for the first time, said Peter Docherty, Founder and CTO, ThinkAnalytics.

Our ability to build multiple profiles per set-top box allows us to have unique recommendations for each person in a household. Bringing together live TV with set-top box viewing histories, combined with Mediaroom TV services, delivers very compelling and richer discovery and recommendations results for any video-enabled device.

Eutelsat Communications today announced that its satellite broadband service has been chosen by the Albanian Government via the Albanian Postal Service to connect 850 post offices, schools and local government offices in rural areas to the Internet as part of the “Digital Age of Communications Agenda” initiated to increase free public Internet access for Albanian citizens.

Eutelsat’s Skylogic affiliate has teamed up with its longstanding partner in Albania, Tring Communications, to equip schools and post offices with the Tooway broadband service powered by the KA-SAT satellite. The first of a total 1,000 access points are currently being deployed, using an 8 Mbps satellite service that enables users to benefit from the Internet for information and education and to accessservices that include video streaming.The schools and post offices benefiting from Tooway are located across Albania, including in the most rural and hard-to reach areas that are easily served by a satellite service.

Tring Communications is the newest brand of Albanian Satellite Communications (ASC), a private company headquartered in Tirana with operating facilities around the region.

Albania’s Prime minister, Prof. Dr. Sali Berisha, commented on the project: “We have a very special terrain in our country and it is important that our villages, towns and cities do not suffer and are not discriminated against because the private sector does not wish to invest in a broadband infrastructure in these difficult or remote areas. By licensing private companies to build their own networks, the government has expanded the broadband infrastructure. The last mile can now be completed by the public sector or in partnership with the private sector. It can also be assigned to the private sector by the Albanian Postal Service. As a result, we will very soon have more than 1,000 free Internet access points throughout Albania.”

Arjan Kraja, General Director of Tring Communications confirmed that the first phase of the project is beginning in the peripheries of Tirana and will then expand to other cities, towns and villages. “Called Public Access Points (PAP), this project opens opportunities for Albanians to have free access to the fastest and highest quality Internet service, even in the deepest rural areas of the country,. Tring Communications will make this initiative possible in six weeks through satellite technology and fibre.”

Jean-Francois Fenech, Skylogic CEO, added: “Our satellite broadband solutions delivered by KA-SAT have been designed to ensure that users throughout Europe and the Mediterranean Basin can have access to broadband services today, not tomorrow or the day after. We are delighted to be involved in this important initiative to bring these services to Albanian citizens.”

MEMS (Multicultural & Ethnic Media Sales), moves closer to becoming the fifth largest sales house in the UK (based on revenue and share of impacts), following the inclusion of two new channels as part of its ethnic package, available from mid-October 2012.

Now the largest ethnic sales-house in Europe, and responsible for the introduction and rationalisation of specific ethnic viewing packages, MEMS will be offering 9XM, a youth-oriented music channel, broadcasting Bollywood music, in a format designed to appeal to second and third generation Asian TV viewers in the UK.

The 2nd new channel, Rishtey, comes from the stable of Colors Television (the third largest channel in India) and Viacom. It will broadcast the best of Colors, combined with a number of new-to-the-UK shows.

The introduction of 9XM and Rishtey increase MEMS’ ethnic package options to 9 BARB and 21 non-BARB channels, as well as a number of ethnic magazine titles and websites.

Two renowned international news channels, RT’s Rusiya Al-Yaum and Russia Today, have joined the exclusive High Definition (HD) television bouquet offered by YahLive, the UAE-based direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television service provider.

The addition of Rusiya Al-Yaum and Russia Today channels, broadcasting in Arabic and English respectively, means that YahLive, with over 40 HD channels, is continuing to build the HD Hotspot for the Middle East and North Africa at 52.5 degrees East.

Available free-to-air (FTA), both Rusiya Al-Yaum and Russia Today broadcast 24/7 to more than 550 million people in over 100 countries around the world. The channels are based in Moscow with a network of bureaus all over the globe, including New York, London, Miami, Los Angeles, Paris, Dubai, Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo and Delhi, and another TV studio in Washington, DC. RT is the only Russian TV channel to be nominated twice for the International Emmy Award in the News category.

Russia Today is the flagship news channel of the RT network and covers major political, economic and cultural issues of our time, with supporting analysis and documentaries, for viewers wishing to question more. Rusiya Al-Yaum, Russia's first Arabic news channel, has a rolling 24-hour schedule of political, economic, cultural and sports stories supplemented with movies, documentaries and feature broadcasts.

Mohamed Youssif, YahLive’s CEO, said: “The addition of these two acclaimed channels further strengthens the position of YahLive as the hotspot for High Definition television in the region. We’re selecting channel partners based on the quality of their programming and the multi-cultural mix of our audience across the region. For example, Russia Today is the second most-watched foreign news channel in the United States.

“High Definition is the future of television and, because we have the capacity and engineering infrastructure, YahLive can offer the future today. The range of channels available on the platform also means that there is something for everyone."

Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor in chief, added: “We are delighted to extend our reach across the Middle East and North Africa with YahLive. RT’s viewers in the region are already dedicated and engaged, and we’re excited that now we can further enrich their viewing experience by delivering our best programming in HD, bringing the intensity of the frontline to their living rooms.”

YahLive has benefited from the shared knowledge and experience of the global satellite operator SES. Using SES’s extensive knowledge of HD TV, YahLive has developed a high-quality, robust and secure HD TV standard for its services in the region. SES operates 44 direct-to-home (DTH) platforms across the globe, carrying more than 5,200 TV channels, of which more than 1,300 are in HD.

YahLive is a joint venture company with Yahsat, the United Arab Emirates-based satellite communications company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mubadala Development Company, and the global satellite operator SES.

KIT digital Content Solutions, a service and solution provider for the digital content value chain, has signed a deal with local partner, Actccent in Singapore, enabling DCP duplication and distribution throughout south east Asia.

The deal will allow KIT to provide global content owners with the best local servicing and logistics solutions throughout their region.

KIT will be offering DCP duplication and physical distribution across all of South East Asia from its facility in Singapore, through electronic delivery of content onto its servers.

Alan Christensen, director, Digital Cinema, KIT digital Content Solutions, said: “We are very pleased to be able to offer services and logistics across south east Asia. This deal spreads KIT digital Content Solutions’ footprint into another key region where our involvement will improve the standards of digital cinema solutions in line with industry expectations.

"With future distribution methods currently far from adequate in this region, we really wanted to offer this service as a strong interim solution to reduce costs and drive efficiency. We selected Actccent as our partner based on their wealth of knowledge and experience in handling distribution across South East Asia. With operations in various neighboring territories, they bring extreme value to the current and future distribution chain.”

Mark Wettasinghe, founder and chief catalyst officer at Actccent, added: “I am delighted to be a partner of KIT digital Content Solutions for this service. This partnership brings forth breakthrough offerings to global content owners, digital platform operators and studios. To these clients, we will be able to offer newer and more efficient services that were not possible before.

"These are exciting times; we are starting production and further ramping up with some major releases already scheduled. Coupled with our expertise and knowledge honed from years of leadership in the manufacturing and logistics industry, we will grow a solid operation. We look forward to meeting with other global content distributors on their up-and-coming visits to our site.”